I see this a lot in China. Someone forgets how to write a character and asks his friends for help. Or, a Chinese person explains his rare surname to someone he's just met. This conversation happens so quickly I usually can't follow it. I know some of the vocab（木字旁、点、撇、宝盖头、左边、右边）but not enough to keep up.

Could you guys do an intermediate or advanced lesson on how to talk about writing Chinese characters?

Thanks for the suggestion. We actually had a dialogue covering something like this at the beginning level, but didn't publish it because it ended up being too specialized for someone just starting out. It's a good idea to try and reframe something like this at a higher level though -- we'll see what we can do the next time we have a dialogue recording session.